Field of the Invention
This invention relates to electrostatographic reproduction machines, and more particularly to apparatus for recovering waste toner particles from such machines.
Electrostatographic machines such as copiers and printers are well known for repeatably producing or reproducing quality copies of original documents using developer material containing toner particles. Typically in such machines, a latent image of an original document is formed electrostatically on a clean image-bearing surface and then developed or made visible with developer material made available at a development station of such machine. The developed image is then transferred from the image-bearing surface onto a suitable receiver sheet where it is subsequently fused to form a permanent copy of the original document. In order to ensure the quality of subsequent copies, residual or waste toner particles left on the image-bearing surface following each image transfer, for example, are removed at a cleaning station by a cleaning apparatus.
Waste toner particles being removed, as such, are powdery, very fine, and dusty, and ordinarily have a distinctive visible color, for example black. Consequently, such particles can easily become airborne, and therefore are normally a source of contamination within the machine. More importantly, the recovery and handling of such particles can understandably be very messy.
Special apparatus for recovering and handling such waste toner particles are disclosed for example in U.S. Pat. No. 4,724,459, issued Feb. 9, 1988 to Ford, and in U.S. Pat. No. 3,924,566, issued Dec. 9, 1975 to Dennie. In both patents, the powdery waste toner particles are collected or recovered into a plastic bottle for subsequent disposal or handling. Because handling such particles even in a plastic bottle can still be messy, it is suggested in the '566 patent (to Dennie) to heat the plastic bottle in order to solidify the waste toner inside such plastic bottle. Unfortunately, however, plastic bottles that are filled with a plastic-base powder or solid in this manner are difficult to sort and recycle among other such chemical waste, and are therefore more likely to be classified as unsafe chemical waste. There is, therefore, still a need for more satisfactory methods and apparatus for cleanly and safely recovering and handling waste toner particles from electrostatographic machines.